On Wednesday, October 25, at around 10am, the senior class filed into the Harris Center for their weekly Graderoom. As everyone got comfortable in their seats, Associate Director of College Counseling Andrea Mondragon and Assistant Director of College Counseling Rebecca Tebbe made some announcements about the November 1st deadline, a week away. Soon after, one last person came through the doors. She sat down, and then introduced herself as Lola to the entire twelfth grade.

Her first interaction with her new classmates at Parker. Belaval was a senior at the Baldwin School of Puerto Rico in San Juan, a PPK-12 independent college preparatory school, before coming to Chicago and transferring schools.

Belaval said her first few weeks at Parker have gone smoothly. “It’s going well,” she said. “I like how liberal the school is. In Baldwin, it was sort of similar, but more restrictive. You couldn’t leave the school, and you had to drive everywhere.”

Justin Brandon, Head of the Upper School, explained the steps that were taken to register Belaval.  “Like other students, we looked and determined if we had space for another senior, since it’s a non-traditional time to join Parker,” he said. “She went through the process like any other student. We found that she would be a good fit at Parker.”

Throughout September both Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million citizens, leaving a great portion of the population without power, food, or shelter.

Yadiner Sabir, high school Spanish teacher, did not hear from her family in Puerto Rico for weeks.  “Knowing nothing about my parents was really bringing me down,” she said. “but I have a family to take care of… and not talking about it is a way of supporting ignorance.”

Belaval recalls her experience when the hurricanes hit and the aftermath. “I had it easier than a lot of people because our house was stable,” Belaval said. “We didn’t have power, so we used a generator, which used up diesel. It would get really hot and we wouldn’t have water since we don’t have pumps. We had to worry a lot about food… my mom and I just didn’t leave the house.”

Before the island was hit, Belaval was a dedicated student at Baldwin, taking classes from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day.

“A lot of days, we had double periods of the same class,” she said. “Sometimes, there was a lot of homework, but that’s normal with private schools like mine.”

In addition to her required courses, Belaval took art classes at Liga de Arte in San Juan and worked with Para la Naturaleza, a nature-oriented organization in Puerto Rico, to help lower the immense green iguana population, which overpopulate the area and are considered pests.

“Baldwin is a very similar school to Parker,” Sabir added. “I was happy to see that the school opened its doors to a student who needed to finish senior year.”

Belaval recently recalled the hardships she endured because of Irma and Maria.

“It was very tense,” Belaval said. “We were mostly scared about security because our place is normally protected, but the gate was open since there was no power. Someone could come in and take stuff from us. Communication was very hard, but I was able to contact my aunt and take a plane.”

Sabir expressed continued concern for Puerto Rico, “Aid is still not getting to the people who need it,” she said. “If you want to have a true understanding of what’s happening, you need to rely on Puerto Rican media. Puerto Ricans feel forgotten, taken advantage of.”

Sabir made similar comments at the LASO (Latin-American Student Organization) MX last month.

“Unless I push the issue, it doesn’t go out there,” she said. “Yes, I have a responsibility as a Puerto Rican to educate others, but it shouldn’t be my responsibility to educate others about responsibility.”

Now that Belaval is living in the city with her mother, aunt, and uncle, she can reflect on her experience.

“It’s more complicated than people think,” she said. “Not everyone is suffering equally. I’m not suffering that much since I’m here. Look at it from all angles, and try to help in the most productive way possible.”

Holding back tears during an interview, Sabir voiced her personal connection to her home country. “At some point in the future, I will travel back to Puerto Rico, but I don’t think that I’ll ever see the Puerto Rico I grew up in,” Sabir said. “I will never see that in my people, in my country, and that’s really hard.”

Addressing the Parker community, Sabir spoke directly to the faculty: “teach the Puerto Rican history,” she said. “We are your history, you are our history, and you owe it to us to teach it.”